What you see is what you get……. birds, animals, and all sorts of things, but remember; Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress. Don't strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt. .

The pied piper of Kathu…. Southern-pied Babbler….

The southern pied babbler (Turdoides bicolor)

This a species of bird in the Leiothrichidae family, found in dry savannah of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

A behavioural description given by Wikipedia sums these birds up beautifully….

“Aggression toward fledglings is most commonly observed when the dominant pair have begun to incubate another brood. During this period, begging fledglings will be punished by parents using aggressive behaviour such as jumping on the youngster. In all cases, fledglings stop begging immediately following attack. Brood overlap results in a distinctive division of labour, with subordinate adults continuing to care for fledglings while the dominant pair concentrate their effort on the new brood. Owing to the extended period of post-fledging care in this species, this can result in dependent young from multiple broods being raised simultaneously.”

Now is this not a lesson we could learn from them,???? Kids get out of hand … “JUMP ON THEM !!!!” ….

Thanks LuAnn the are prolific breeders and I love that discipline happens in nature…
Changing you theme is easy and goes like a clock work… my problem is I use “Windows Live writer” to write my posts before publishing them direct to the blog… I had a few problems changing the theme on the writer… bt the change on the blog was easy… just select and preview, if happy, publish…

Hi there Rob. I got sent this three times and it wasn’t until the third time that it would let me read it. Kept directing me to “page not found”. Good to see it has finally come through and looks like you’ve changed your setup – looks good incidentally as are the photos as always.

Diana this has given me an idea…. it might not be received to well by the authorities as some behaviour in the wild is hard… elephant .. as loving as they are, are heavy on discipline and have been witnessed giving their young a good hiding.,.. now that I received, as did my children and we all grew up alright… but you can’t do that any more … still it could be quite a good lesson for parents…